this seems pretty serious and was held very quiet for a long time. coldeportes is talking about having a pct team, a ct team and 2 more satellite teams in colombia. also having corti is manager is excellent as he was great director of barloworld and saeco in their strong years and he knows contacts and what it takes to make it in europe.

i definitely look forward to this.man i'm sorry to say it but i think colombia es pasion came to europe as sacrificial lambs,to beat those europeans you need a strong manager to take care of things and corti is one of those indeed.can't wait to see them riding in italy.will gobernacion let acevedo go?

That'll teach me for being too lazy to start a new thread (see 'General news' section). One correction: they will have a pro conti and a conti team and "with the support of these two teams" will set up a cycling school for youngsters.

jens_attacks wrote:i definitely look forward to this.man i'm sorry to say it but i think colombia es pasion came to europe as sacrificial lambs,to beat those europeans you need a strong manager to take care of things and corti is one of those indeed.can't wait to see them riding in italy.will gobernacion let acevedo go?

They did struggle a bit, although part of the problem is that their most talented riders are very young. Also, being pro-conti means they haven't been allowed to ride important Colombian races like Clasico RCN, which I think explains the decision to go with two teams.

jens_attacks wrote:i definitely look forward to this.man i'm sorry to say it but i think colombia es pasion came to europe as sacrificial lambs,to beat those europeans you need a strong manager to take care of things and corti is one of those indeed.can't wait to see them riding in italy.will gobernacion let acevedo go?

thisd totally. they were illrepared and left without money by their sponsors, especially coldeportes and now we know why. but it is better to indeed have european experienced manager.

other good news is that from next year on the vuelta colombia will be broadcasted live in it's entirety after colombian viewers were quite annoyed by the coverage of the past 2 years especially.

i am very happy that frank osorio is in the team:he is 1988, but he is improving very fast in the last 2 years. imho he is a rough diamond and if he will be cut in the right way probably we will see an atypical colombian ( he is 188 cm)doing really great things in europe
he is superstrong

cote' grimpeur, i hope that nairo quintana will be confirmed and i am very unhappy that freddy montana is out of the team.he really deserves the chance to be in a better team than boyaca.

the cutting edge for coldeportes will be get invitations in races like dauphinee' , that suit very well the colombians attitude , and to get funding in the right time from colombian governement.
colombia es pasion failed because saldarriaga was not able to confirm the invitation to dauphinee' , which was very likely to happen and to the vuelta, which was very difficult to happen.
the other reason was the lack of funding and the lack of experience on the european scene.
the presence of claudio corti is a better guaranty in terms of experience and organisation,. the support of president santos (which is supposed to be backing strongly coldeportes which has 28 million euros for supporting the colombian sport development)is even more important.

let's hope cafe the colombia times are back: that will be really good for cycling

colombia es pasion failed because saldarriaga was not able to confirm the invitation to dauphinee'

I think this was because of only 1 French team making the World Tour. Prudhomme promised the Colombians an invite at the 2010 Tour de l'Avenir, but then found, with the 4 French teams, that he had 5 teams for 4 places; unsurprisingly, it was CeP that missed out.

Is this really good news? Sounds to me like two strong Colombian teams that were being built up and getting to race in Europe will be severely weakened to start a new team which might not get anywhere.

This looks like a really exciting team. I hope they sign Quintana. I could see this team winning every MTF in grand tours in like 4 years with all the young'ns they got on that team. Then all they have to do is sign uran, henao, and rujano and they are a boss team.

hrotha wrote:Is this really good news? Sounds to me like two strong Colombian teams that were being built up and getting to race in Europe will be severely weakened to start a new team which might not get anywhere.

Swede1 wrote:This looks like a really exciting team. I hope they sign Quintana. I could see this team winning every MTF in grand tours in like 4 years with all the young'ns they got on that team. Then all they have to do is sign uran, henao, and rujano and they are a boss team.

Uran should concern himself with classicvs and hilly races as far as I'm concerned.

hrotha wrote:Is this really good news? Sounds to me like two strong Colombian teams that were being built up and getting to race in Europe will be severely weakened to start a new team which might not get anywhere.

I agree we should be cautious at this stage, but it looks like this team will be better funded than either EPM or CeP. EPM have never talked about going pro-conti, and you can see why if you look at the Colombia es Pasion experience this year. They just haven't been able to race much - they had a one month block of racing in Europe in March-April, another one in August, and the Vuelta a Colombia. They haven't been able to take part in other Colombian races due to UCI rules.

Another issue is the biopassport - South America is not covered by the UCI's system, so CeP had to fork out a quarter of their budget to pay for it themselves. A team based in Italy will presumably not have that problem.